The Key Lost and Found
by AlterEgox5
Summary: Nick was a simple traveler until one day she found a key and had her first encounter with a man that called himself the Doctor.
1. Chapter 1

**The Key Lost and Found**

The Doctor leaned back against the TARDIS, watching people as they hurried by. It had been quiet enough on the street at 4am for him to sneak in, but now the work rush had begun and he would have to wait until nightfall to leave. He'd popped back to Earth to make sure all was well and for once, it was.

He was about to leave when he felt something weird. A strange prickling sensation on the back of his neck. _What the…?_ He spun around to search for the source. People bustled past, on cell phones and fancy suits and skirts, but across the street his gaze settled on one person. A girl, dark blonde hair streaked golden by the sun. She strode forward, determined, strong, with a large black hiking backpack on her shoulders. Why did she have that pack? Was she the one giving him that odd feeling? There were so many people? She looked up and glance at her surroundings before he eyes locked with his. She kept walking, but held his gaze. She seemed curious and then looked to her other side for a moment and then simply marched on.

The Doctor looked in the direction she had and at once was glad and dejected. Martha stood with her husband by the fountain, laughing and fending off his playful advances. It must have been Martha's presence that alerted him. The last thing she needed was to see him again like a ghost.

So that's what he decided to become and slipped away into the crowd to find something to occupy his time until nightfall. He heard a little jingle behind him, like metal on concrete, but kept walking. Someone must have dropped some change.

--

All around Nick, the babble of people rushing to the office, yakking on phones, mouths half-filled with bagel, and the clack of heels against pavement filled her ears. Her hiking boots were in rebellion with the noise, a heavy _thud, thud_ rising from them instead. She added an extra spring in one step to resettle her 60 pound pack. It carried everything she owned; clothes for all seasons, small propane stove, sleeping bag, compass, tent, water, food, and more. She doubted London would have a place to pitch a tent, but she doubted she had enough money to rent a hotel room. Her last odd job hadn't paid much, and she'd used a lot just to get to the city.

_Oh well, being here is enough_, she thought. After all, this wouldn't be the first time things had gotten a bit sticky. She remembered Russia and the nasty weather that had hit. She shivered. _I'll find something here,_ she assured herself.

An abrupt prickling sensation on the back of her neck made her shrug the pack around, but the feeling didn't go away. _What the…?_ The old instinct—it felt like someone was watching her. She glanced around before catching the eye of someone. A man across the street in a brown trench coat, his hands shoved into the pockets. He stared at her with an odd kind of intensity, as though he were trying to figure something out. He was kind of cute—brown hair that flipped around a bit in the breeze, a boyish face, yet, somehow, not young. _Weird. Is he really looking at me or…?_

She turned her head to her left but only saw a pretty woman with dark skin laughing with what was probably her boyfriend. Nick shrugged and kept moving. Maybe the guy was an unhappy ex-boyfriend.

When she looked back again, he was gone. It was then she realized he'd been standing in front of a blue Police Box.

_Weird_, she thought again, but made a note of it in case she ran out of options when night came.

--

"Ugh. Nine o'clock and I need to get out of these boots," Nick muttered to herself. She was right about the tent—a person couldn't just pitch one in the middle of a major metropolitan city. As was the case, she'd returned to the blue Police Box. She had the feeling that later on during the night if someone came by to use it, she'd get yelled at and ushered out. _Oh well. A few hours sleep is all I want right now._ Two hour patches of sleep weren't anything new either.

Nick flexed her shoulders, ready to shed the pack. She pushed against the doors. They didn't move.

"Oh man," she moaned and stared up at the sign. "Public my ass. Great." She pushed a few times more, but the doors refused to budge.

She sighed, unsure of what to do next. This had been her last plan. She took a step back and her food came down on something that made a jingling noise as it squeaked away from the boot's rubber edge. She looked down. In the dim light a little tarnished key glinted up at her. For a few minutes she only stared at it. _No way…_ She picked it up and turned it over in her fingers. No way it could be that easy.

"This isn't going to work," she mumbled as she fitted the key in the lock. "I'm just kidding myself. There is no way this key actually goes to—"

It turned, clicked, and the door opened a crack. Nick took at the key and held it in a tight fist.

"_Yes!_"

She bounded inside and started to swing the door shut behind her. At the last second she stopped. Frozen in her tracks, her mouth dropped open as she gazed around in wonder.

It was a room, a huge room. It didn't match the tiny box outside. Parts of it looked like massive inorganic tree branches, rising up to hold the place together. The floor looked like normal, everyday metal grating. Other parts, the bulbous lights and bizarre center column with panels filled with wires and knobs and switches and levers and weird sea green lighting definitely were not normal.

_I did just step into a box right?_ Maybe her eyes had deceived her. Maybe it wasn't a box. Maybe it was a tricky kind of paint job that made the box seem 3D when it was actually just flat on a building. _Except it wasn't _on_ a building—it was right on the sidewalk, I remember that!_

She stepped forward cautiously and cleared her throat, making the sound loud and obvious. Nothing responded.

_Any normal person would have left by now,_ she told herself. _Yeah, too bad I'm not normal._

"Anyone here?" she called. No answer. _Famous last words of people who get killed and eaten by aliens._

She crept up to the panel, looking, but not touching. No way was she going to touch anything in here. It didn't have a dangerous or threatening feel to it, but it certainly wasn't human. She examined what seemed to be controls. _How many people does it take to operate this thing—whatever it is? Six? Three? One creature with multiple arms?_ No. Something like that couldn't be walking around in the middle of London. Unless, of course, it was a shapeshifter…or a body snatcher.

Nick began to consider leaving when she thought she heard something outside and dove over the side rail, hitting hard her side and managing to scoot over under the grate floor with great difficulty. With deft hands she loosened the straps and freed the buckles, shoving it ahead of her and curling up next to it.

_Oh God, I am so screwed._


	2. Chapter 2

The Doctor was about to reach into his pocket for the key when he put a hand to the door and realized it wasn't locked. He paused.

"Huh. Don't remember leaving you open," he said, frowning. He stepped inside and glanced around. Everything seemed normal.

"Is, ah, is anyone in here?" he called. No answer. "No," he said, and then turned to the control panel. "Course not, why would there be?"

_There never is anymore._ He started flipping switches and pressing buttons. He pondered for a while about where he wanted to go next and then set the TARDIS in motion.

--

When the same man from earlier in the day walked into the room, Nick could only stare at him from beneath the grate and think, _Oh my God!_ When he called, she didn't answer out of uncertainty, and when the entire room suddenly lurched to the left she nearly screamed, _Oh my GOD!_

Where they _going_ somewhere? Had they just taken off? This couldn't be a spaceship—it couldn't just be sitting next to a busy city street and not attract attention! Not as though it mattered now. She was stuck here with him—whoever he was. She braced herself against some bars and peered up at him.

For a moment she couldn't believe what she saw. He literally ran around the central column, yelling at it from time to time, turning knobs and pulling levers and kicking things and—_was that a sledgehammer?_

_Oh God, I've climbed aboard the fixer-upper of spaceships,_ she thought, closing her eyes. It looked like it should have been a multi-man—alien—job, but this guy was doing it all himself. The thin was finally riding smoothly and he leaned over the glowing circuitry. The thin line of his mouth and dark look of his eyes told her he was thinking. For a moment she forgot about where she was and her current predicament and became fascinated by his deep brown eyes, the way they stared at so much more than the wires. At something far away, farther away than she could imagine.

It was then she nearly stood and announced her presence to him. Whatever he was thinking about, he wasn't angry, he wasn't malicious, he was…sad. But a deeper kind of sad. Old and deserted and alone and lost. Like no other sadness on Earth. And she'd seen the desolate and hungry, agonized and abandoned. A shiver went through her, sinking all the way to her bones. He wasn't human. That was certain. It was like she could stare at his face and look _backward_. No matter how human he appeared, he wasn't. No way.

The room jerked again, slamming her forward and then back into the bars. Nick swore under her breath. It bounced around for a few more minutes and then finally stopped. She realized she had her pack straps in a death grip. Painfully, she released them and went back to watching the alien. He fiddled a little with the controls and then strode toward the doors and disappeared outside. She caught a glimpse of trees beyond the doors before they closed.

She sat against the pack and leaned her head back, feeling slightly ill from the stress and worry and radical movement. Going outside could be deadly for all she knew. Alien pathogens and an atmosphere unfriendly to humans.

_Great. Now what?_

She remained there for a while, breathing slowly to calm down, and eventually recognizing the exhaustion in her body. _Not the best time to start down the road of sleep deprivation._ She stood on a double-edged sword. Risk sleeping here or hold out and fight off sleep deprivation. She wished she'd had more than a few hours sleep the night before. Still, despite her current situation, she still didn't feel threatened. Finally, against her better judgment but at the mercy of the rest of her body, she fell asleep right where she sat.

The bang of the door swinging open snapped Nick back into wakefulness. A quick look at her watch told her she'd been asleep for five hours. Still a little groggy, she spun to look through the grate as the alien man charged through, something whizzing past his cheek and another striking off his shoulder blade. He shouted in pain, and then turned to yell, "Right! Next time then! I'll remember that offering blue feathers to the chief offends him! Good day then!" and slammed the doors shut. He trudged up to the controls and in a matter of moments the ship was rocking about again, but this time Nick had prepared herself and hung on. She kept watching him and saw him reach behind himself with a slight wince, the very tips of his fingers coming away red with blood.

_At least he bleeds like me,_ she thought.

After a few minutes, the ship thudded to a halt. And, same as the last time, the man walked right out again, brown coat flapping around him, only this time a dark stain had appeared where he'd been hit by the object.

_All right, that's it; I'm not riding around in here forever._

Nick got up and, leaving her pack where it was, made for the door. She spotted the two objects on the ground and picked one up, staring at it in disbelief. An arrow. An Indian arrow. Sharp stone tip, painted shaft, feathered end. He'd been hit with an _arrow?_ She eyed the door warily and took a deep breath. _You're a traveler Nikki—you can handle an alien location. You can do this. Just stick near the door._

She dropped the arrow and pushed open the doors. She gasped at the scene before her.

She'd stepped onto pale pink sand, water the color of melted sapphires lazily sliding up and down its edges. She couldn't tell where the water ended and the sky began. It was strange—she could see clearly enough, and yet it seemed to be night. No sun hung in the sky, instead the blue was dotted not just with hundreds of stars, but with miniature galaxies of burning orange and blue-white and others a multitude of colors. Clouds of sparkling red and brown curled far away, giving birth to new stars and filled with the magic gases that helped create the universe. It was like looking at a picture sent back from the Hubble telescope. Beautiful didn't do it justice, it was…otherworldly. Everything above and below sparkled as though sprinkled with diamond dust.

Finally she managed to tear her gaze away long enough to examine her immediate surroundings. Behind her appeared to be a jungle, huge leaves and foliage of dark green, deep purple, and heavy pink stood picturesque. No breeze to stir them. All around her she could smell sugar. The vague thought that something unpleasant could live in the jungle crossed her mind, but somehow that didn't seem likely. She went back to staring at the infinite sky.

--

The Doctor slipped out of the jungle and froze mid-bite into a palaga fruit when he saw someone standing just outside the TARDIS. A girl. She stood awestruck at the sight before her. He didn't say anything; instead he decided to watch her reaction for a bit.

_How did she get here? How did she get inside the TARDIS?_ he wondered as he examined her. Then suddenly it hit him—he'd seen her before. The girl he'd spotted on Earth when that strange sensation had hit. Maybe it hadn't been Martha t all. But why this girl? Was she human? And _how_ was it possible for her to get aboard the TARDIS?

He waited for her to go into denial, to start shaking her head and lose control. If she was human, she should. But instead she just watched the sky and then, to his surprise, a smile broke out over her face. It didn't make sense. She was too impressed to be an alien, and yet she wasn't frightened—or at least frightened enough to show it. Rather, she was excited, amazed, and from the look on her face, loving every minute of it. Looks could be deceiving, he knew that. She simply could not be human and take this in so calmly. Happily, even.

But what if she was human? She was so awed by what she saw, how often did he find that? Someone so without fear of being in a totally alien place and eating it up like a kid in a candy store. Like him. And if she'd been the one to give him that weird feeling…

_Am I meant to take her?_ He didn't believe in destiny…for the most part. But sometimes things just seemed to happen like puzzle pieces falling into place. Even if time was just a big ball of wobbly stuff, little things tended to fit together so nicely from time to time. The notion that she'd gotten on his ship out of destiny or anything else seemed ridiculous, but the thought of remaining on his own for even longer was depressing. He was tired of doing things on his own, without someone to just…_be there_. He had the feeling she wasn't stupid, that she knew exactly what she saw.

He'd find out about her first. Then…maybe he'd see if she wanted to come along.

He cleared his throat.


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Note:**

When it comes to some of the obvious references the Doctor mentions at the end, oh yeah. I went there.

* * *

Nick gasped and spun around.

"You!" she let out before she could stop herself. The man was behind her several paces with what looked like half of a large coconut in one hand and a little purple fruit in the other. He took a bite from the coconut fruit and watched her. _Can he understand me?_ she thought, then paused. _Wait, he speaks English—I heard him earlier. He should be able to understand me._

"I, um, I'm sorry if I'm not supposed to be here," she said, looking apologetic. He still didn't say anything. He just stared, examining, like he was sizing her up.

"Look," she said, "would you just please say something?"

"How'd you get into the TARDIS?" he said.

"What?" she asked, startled by his abrupt speech. "Oh, you mean…this?" She touched the side of the TARDIS.

"Yes. How did you get in it?"

She nibbled sheepishly on her thumbnail for a moment and then held up the key she'd found. His eyes widened in surprise.

"I was looking for a place to sleep," she explained, "and earlier in the day I'd seen your, ah, ship. Except I didn't know it was a ship then. So that night when I came back I tried to get in and couldn't, I found this key on the ground. I didn't actually think it would work, but I tried it anyway…"

In one swift movement, he'd plopped the purple fruit inside the coconut half and shoved his hand into a pocket. He turned it out as if to show her the hole in it.

"Aah…" he said, as if everything suddenly made sense. He looked at her and held out his hand. "Give that to me please."

Nick stepped forward and held out the key. He took it and after checking for holes in his other pocket, slipped it inside.

"Sorry," she said.

He shrugged and seemed to relax. "Nah, it's all right. So, what do you think?"

She blinked and didn't respond right away. Think about what? She glanced around. "Well, this obviously isn't Earth."

"No. This is Ralaphonaxilinion."

Her mouth threatened to curl into a smile. "And you're obviously not a human."

"No."

There was a pause.

"Care to tell me what you are then?"

"Mmm, maybe later. Tell me, what's your name?"

"Nick."

He raised an eyebrow. "Just Nick?"

"It's short for Nikki. I don't like Nikki. It's too girly—either too six-year-old or too teenage ditz. So it's Nick."

"Nick."

She shrugged. "What about you?"

"Oh, I'm the Doctor."

This time Nick paused.

"So do I call you 'The Doctor' every time or just 'Doctor'?"

"Just Doctor is fine."

Silence.

"You're not going to ask 'Doctor who?' or anything?" he asked.

She shrugged again. "Doctor doesn't necessarily have to be a title with you, does it? Language is arbitrary. Doctor to you may not mean the same as it does to most people. Can you perform surgery?"

"Well…"

"My point exactly."

To her surprise he grinned at her, a dazzling smile the complete opposite of the serious face she'd seen earlier in the day. He extended his hand and they shook.

"There is one thing I'd like to ask you," she said.

He held his fruit-wielding hands wide, as if expecting her questions. "Ask away."

"Why does your ship look like this?" She patted the TARDIS.

He looked surprised. "You're not going to ask me how it's bigger on the inside?"

She gave him an are-you-kidding? grin. "I'm willing to bet it has something to do with dimensions and science that I don't understand. What's TARDIS mean?"

"Time and relative dimension in space."

She put up her hands and then let them drop. "There you go."

His surprise didn't lessen. "Well that's new."

"What?"

"Nothing. Ah, actually, it looks like this because of something called a Chameleon Circuit. Broken Chameleon Circuit, actually. But I've grown fond of the TARDIS like this so I gave up on fixing it. Just one more thing to do, you know."

"I see." She nodded and looked around. "So…now what?"

"Now I take you home."

"Oh." Her shoulders slumped.

He eyed her for a moment. "But I suppose we could stay here for a little longer. I mean, if you wanted to."

Excitement surged through her. "Really? It's so beautiful here."

He nodded and came forward, plopping down on the sand beside her. "It's one of my favorite planets…though I haven't been here in quite some time. Excellent remedies for healing though."

She remembered the arrow wound he had. "Oh, really?"

"Mm. And delicious fruit. Try some."

She sat down next to him as he took the purple fruit out of the coconut look-alike, and held it out to her.

"Is it okay for me to eat this?" she asked, holding it as though it could explode at any moment.

"Yeah, you'll be fine."

The honesty in his face and casual manner made is simply impossible not to believe him. She took a bite out of the fleshy white fruit. A sweet mix of marshmallow cream and coconut danced on her taste buds.

"Oh," she said through a mouthful of fruit. "I could never live here." She swallowed and handed it back to him.

"Why not?"

"I'd die from overeating."

He laughed and set both pieces of fruit on the ground. "Stay here, I'll be right back."

He ran into the TARDIS and returned a few moments later with a silver mortar and pestle. He hit the sand again and put the violet fruit into the mortar and began to mash it up.

_I'm sitting on a beach trillions of light years away from Earth eating strange fruit with an alien._ _Definitely the best day of my life._

"Wait, wait, no, look here," he said suddenly, pointing the stained pestle at her. "Now are you sure you're human? Because no human has ever just accepted me as the Doctor and moved on."

Nick laughed. "I'm human. I'm just not normal. Or so everyone tells me."

He smiled and shook his head. Nick took another bite of the would-be coconut, relishing the sweetness in her mouth. When the Doctor finished mashing the purple fruit, he shed his coat.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Got a bit of an injury earlier. This'll help," he said, gesturing toward the bowl of plum mush.

"Oh. Yeah, were those _Indians_ earlier?"

He stopped what he was doing. "Just how long were you in there?"

She blushed. "Since you left Earth. I was too worried to say anything."

"Oh for crying out loud, everyone's afraid of me," he said more to himself than to her. He unbuttoned his shirt. "But yes, Machapungas. 1797. Ran into a tribe by accident. Sort of insulted their chief."

"Yeah, I saw the end result of that." Nick was about to take another bite when the term "1767" sank in. "Wait—so this thing is a time machine too?"

The Doctor had half his shirt off, one of his arms stuck. "Yep."

"Really?"

He peered at her. "Now, you say 'really' in a wow-that's-amazing sort of way instead of a no-you've-got-to-be-joshing-me kind of way."

"Is that bad?"

"No," he tossed the shirt to the ground. "It's just that no one does that either."

"Guess I'm special then."

She took a quick look at his shoulder blade. The arrow wound looked rather nasty. Blood ran down his back from the deep gash. At least it wasn't a very long cut, maybe only two inches. The Doctor dipped his fingers into the mashed fruit and reached back to try and put it on the wound. Only the tips of his fingers could reach, but overall he was making a mess of it.

"Stop it," Nick said. She got up and pointed at him. "I'll be right back."

She ran into the TARDIS and shuffled inside her backpack until she found her little first aid kit. She returned with it and sat behind the Doctor.

"See?" she said, cleaning blood off his back and then dabbing gently at the wound. "You're not much of a doctor, Doctor."

She held a piece of gauze against the cut. "So what's the fruit do?"

"I'll be a lot faster than a band-aid," he said, with an edge of knowing in his voice as he handed the bowl to her.

She scooped up some of the pulp. It felt warm and reminded her of mashed avocado—only purple. She moved the gauze and spread it over the wound. A little squeak escaped her when the wound began to close on its own. The Doctor looked over his shoulder, that wide grin on his face again.

"See?"

Nick wiped away the remaining fruit and blood, revealing unblemished skin beneath. She laughed a little.

"That's….this is incredible."

"I'm a Time Lord," he said as Nick put her first aid kit back together.

"What?"

"That's what I am. A Time Lord. From the planet Gallifrey."

"So what's the difference between a Time Lord and a human being?"

"I'm over 900 years old. And I have two hearts."

She laughed again, loving every word of the conversation. Nothing else would ever compare.

"Two hearts huh? Can I have a listen?"

"Go ahead."

She knew he was still smiling as she scooted down and put an ear against his back. Sure enough, there were two distinct beats inside. _Bump, bump, bump, bump._ As though they alternated beats to make one continuous rhythm unlike a human heart. Hers was pounding, but it still didn't quite match up with both of his. She moved back, unable to stop grinning in utter excitement.

He stood and offered her his hand. She took it more than willingly.

"Now what?" she asked.

"Now I take you home."

He bounded off into the TARDIS, leaving her to stare off at the magnificent, galaxy-filled sky for a little longer before following after him.

--

The TARDIS stopped, nearly throwing Nick to the ground.

"You can't tell me it's like this every time," she said, steadying herself.

"It is, actually."

"Remember never to carry anyone with motions sickness. This place would be a mess."

A tiny smirk appeared on his face. "Well, we're here, back in merry old England."

Nick took that as her cue to leave. She shouldered the pack, wishing she didn't have to. Never would she forget that mystical sky or the untouched beauty of the beach. Nor would she forget him, a Time Lord, with his two heartbeats echoing in her ears. She walked down the grated ramp, dreading the moment she would have to open the door and walk away.

"So…do you have somewhere to go?" the Doctor asked behind her.

She paused. "No. Not really. I just sort of…travel."

"Travel eh?" He seemed to ponder this.

She headed for the door again.

"So…what? No family then?"

"No."

"No crazy mum?"

"No."

"No clingy boyfriend?"

"No."

"No...anybody?"

Could he get any more depressing? "No."

"Lonely life."

The way he said it struck a chord in her. His voice…behind it there had been something rough, like the way people speak when they're too choked up to really speak. She nibbled her bottom lip and turned to stare at him.

"It is."

With great difficulty she faced the door again, moved forward, and opened it. At the end of an alleyway, people were once again bustling about, to work, to lunch, to home, to appointments. Suddenly it was more depressing to watch than ever. Didn't any of them want to know what was out there? Didn't they ever wonder? Didn't they know there was more to travel than just tourist traps and hotel rooms and contrived gift shops?

She could feel the Doctor's eyes at her back. He was watching her, but it didn't feel like he expected her to leave. He was waiting for something. She took a deep breath, about to take the first step outside.

"You know," he said slowly, "you could…always come with me."

Her heart doubled its speed and after a moment, she began to back away from the door, watching the people grow smaller and fade out of view. She looked at him.

"You'd let me do that?"

He shrugged and tried to look nonchalant. "Well…yeah. If you wanted to."

The backpack hit the floor with a loud thud and he looked at her out of the corner of his eye. Then a slow smile came over his face; obviously he was pleased with her decision. She couldn't help but smiling back.

"Let's go," she said.


End file.
